Calls for Papers

Current CFPs

Annual Conference of the Dutch-Belgian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

This conference seeks to address the various modes and strategies through which female
intellectuals (authors, scientists, educators, and others) sought to negotiate and legitimize their authority in Early Modern and Enlightenment Europe (1600-1800).

The 17th and 18th centuries have often been described as a decisive period in terms of
professionalization as well as disciplinary formation and/or consolidation in the arts and
sciences. In the course of this period, learned women increasingly articulated an awareness of their public image and were actively involved in modelling these representations. There is a growing body of scholarship on such individual women’s (self)representation as intellectuals, that invites us to draw out its implications for early-modern cultural history more broadly.

Multiple questions arise when examining representations of female intellectual authority during the Early Modern period and the Enlightenment: which visual and/or textual strategies (e.g. portraits, paratexts and ego-documents) did women (and their critics) use to construct their persona in the emerging intellectual, scientific and literary fields; to what extent were these homogeneous, complementary or rather conflictual? And how did representations of personal and collective authority interact? For instance, when and why did women resort to their (private/public) contact with other (female) authorities, or rather shy away from gendered association and/or collaboration? And to what extent were these legitimizing strategies determined by historical context, geographical boundaries and social position?

The primary objective of this conference is to examine these modes and strategies of female self-representation from an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspective. Papers should therefore move beyond individual case studies and address the conceptual and historiographic issues involved in studying processes of female intellectual legitimation.

We welcome submissions in the form of complete sessions (3 papers + response) or individual papers (20 minutes) preferably in English on the following topics:
– Text and Image: Textual and visual representations of women as intellectual authorities
– Networks of Authority: uses of gendered associations (through paratexts, dedications,
ego-documents) as strategies to gain authority;
– Disciplines: inclusion/exclusion strategies of and by women in emerging disciplines
– Markets and publication strategies: commercial strategies; branding female authority
in the “public market”; discourse on fame/reputation and gender;
– Labels: conceptualizing/classifying female intellectuals and authors in early
historiography and accounts of the cultural field.

Potential speakers are invited to submit a title and abstract of 300 words by May 15 2018.
These, accompanied by a short CV, can be sent to PortraitsandPoses@18e-eeuw.nl.
Notification of acceptance will be given by July 1st 2018. Selected papers will be published in a peer-reviewed edited volume after the conference; authors will be asked to submit revised versions of their conference paper by July 1st, 2019.

This international conference will explore the entanglements of English literature (including travel writing, novels, journalism, and poetry) with Pacific geographies and cultures in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The concept of the “transatlantic” has become familiar in Anglo-American literary studies, but it is only in recent years that the counterbalancing notion of the “transpacific” has received sustained scholarly attention, driven in part by the growing global economic importance of the Asia-Pacific region.

Our conference examines the period—broadly beginning with the end of the Seven Years’ War (1763), the voyages of Captain Cook (1768–79), and the founding of San Francisco (1776), Los Angeles (1781), and New South Wales (1788)—in which Anglo-American attention first begins to “pivot” towards the Pacific, extending through to the imperial engagements of the mid nineteenth century which open a series of ports (including Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Yokohama) to Western trade. These developments give rise not just to a flood of travel writing and journalism on the Pacific but also to numerous literary works by authors (including Melville, Twain, Kipling, and Ballantyne) fascinated by the vast expanse of the Pacific and by its diverse Asian, Oceanic, and North American cultures.

The conference will focus, in particular, upon the “gateways” to the Pacific offered to English travellers and traders by the ports along its rim. These include the major centres of local commerce (Osaka, Hangzhou, Shanghai); long-established European colonies (Batavia, Macau); ports opened by imperial coercion in the nineteenth century (Hong Kong, Yokohama); and newer communities created by expanding colonial empires (San Francisco, Wellington, Vladivostok, Vancouver). These ports become hubs for the exchange not just of people and tradeable goods but also intellectual and imaginative developments. They act as national and imperial nerve-centres, kernels of settlement, sites of intercultural interaction, and even hot-beds of anti-imperial resistance. By bringing cultures together in highly local and specific ways, often in different relations of power, these sites generate hybrid languages and literary forms which, because of their position on the hubs of global circulation, become swiftly exported and adapted. In addition, they become important objects of artistic and literary representation in their own right, often tending to dominate the European history of representation of Asia.

We will ask how these Pacific gateways shape the development of a “transpacific consciousness” in Anglophone literature, whose modes of exchange and patterns of thought can still be seen in modern-day attitudes to the region. Drawing on our location in Tokyo, we will explore the triangulations between Japan, the West, and other Pacific cultures created by the “opening” of the country to trade in the 1850s and the resulting transmission of travel accounts and “japonaiserie” back to Europe. We also welcome papers which focus on other cultures and regions or explore broader transpacific flows. We will aim to replace older models of “East” meeting “West” with a more polyglot and cross-cultural history of Anglophone literature in the Pacific, in which the networks and communities established by Anglo-American imperialism coexist with established intra-Asian networks.

Topics for papers may include:

— English travel writing, novels, journalism, and poetry about Pacific cultures (including China, Japan, Korea, south-east Asia, and Australasia)
— The critical vocabulary of “gateways”, “hubs”, “portals”, and “networks”, and their use as an alternative (or complement) to models stressing imposition / domination
— The motif of the “gateway” or “entry point” in literature (e.g. the “arrival scene” in travel writing)
— Cosmopolitan “openness” and imperial “openings”
— Expatriate and colonial communities in Pacific ports, and their interactions with indigenous cultures
— Imaginative circulation and the development of a “transpacific consciousness”
— Linguistic and generic cross-overs between English and Asia-Pacific languages
— New theoretical models of transculturation, the “contact zone”, or the “centre of accumulation”
— The use of textual “gateways” (titles, introductions, prefaces, chapter-headings, dedications, epigrams, opening sentences and chapters) to frame narrative encounters with the Pacific
— Anglo-American imperialism and its interaction with rival imperial cultures
— Literary explorations of Pacific distance and emptiness
​— The persistence of 19th-century networks in the present day, in the context of actor-network or globalisation theory.

Submissions:

The symposium will include around 20 papers over two days (without parallel sessions, so that everyone can hear each other’s work). We plan to publish an edited collection of essays based on the event.

Please send proposals (250 – 350 words) to pacificgateways@outlook.com by Friday, May 5th, 2017.​ Proposals should be in .doc or .docx format: please include name and institution (if applicable).

​Please contact us in advance if you have any enquiries. We will notify of acceptance by the end of May.

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Women, Money and Markets (1750-1850)

Note: The organizers of the following conference urge applications from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. They are especially interested in global perspectives on women, money, and exchange.

King’s College London, May 11th 2017

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Hannah Barker (University of Manchester)

Caroline Criado-Perez, OBE, One of the leading voices in the campaign for female representation on the banknote and an active promoter and supporter of women in the media

In 2017, Jane Austen will feature on the £10 note as the sole female representative on British currency. To mark this occasion, and explore its problematic significance, the English department at King’s is running a one-day conference with the aim to consider debates about women in relation to ideas of value, market, marketability, as well as debates about different forms of currency and exchange amongst women, and the place of the female writer in the literary marketplace past and present. The conference will address themes including consumerism, shopping, global trade, domestic trade, markets (literary and otherwise), currency, and varying practices of exchange. The conference is interdisciplinary in nature, bridging literature, material culture, gender studies and economic history, and aims to relate the debates of the period to modern day issues about the presence and position of women in the economy and media.

We welcome submissions in the form of individual papers, panels and roundtable discussions on the following themes:

Women as producers and/or consumers in the literary or other marketplaces (including, but not limited to, food, clothing, agriculture and raw materials)

Representations of women at work or women’s involvement in:

Trade and industry

Professional services (such as law, finance, hospitality and the media)

Domestic service

The rural economy

The place of women in the literary marketplace (past and present)

We particularly welcome cross-cultural considerations of the above issues.

Please send 300 word abstracts to the conference email address (womenmoneymarkets@gmail.com) with an indication of your proposed format (individual paper, panel, roundtable, etc.). If you are submitting a proposal for a panel, please include an abstract for each paper (up to 300 words each). Please indicate if you would like your paper to be considered for the edited volume that will be published after the conference.

What do we mean and whom do we envision when we discuss “settlers” or “settler colonialism”? How do we address the impact of European imperialism while not defaulting to a historical perspective that unquestioningly places Europe and Europeans as an origin point for global migration? Similarly, what if, instead of viewing regions such as the “Far East” and “Orient” as the exotic, we take Daniel Goffman’s idea of Europe as the “Far West”? This panel welcomes papers questioning the idea of what a “settler” is and thekinds of cultural hybridity that are recognized by history and those that aren’t. Topics may deal with forced as well as voluntary relocations

Send Abstracts by 15 September 2016 to:

Also of interest to SASECS-members, the organization’s President, Dr. Anne M. Thell, is organizing the following session:

“New Approaches to Margaret Cavendish”

Organizer: Anne M. Thell, National University of Singapore; E-mail: elltam@nus.edu.sg

There seems no better time for a panel devoted to the current state of Cavendish studies: 2016 marks Cavendish’s inclusion in the Routledge “Arguments of the Philosophers” series (with David Cunning’s Cavendish), while it also saw the publication of Sara Mendelson’s new edition of Blazing World (Broadview 2016) and, in the broader commercial sphere, Danielle Dutton’s Margaret the First (Catapult 2016). Indeed, interest in Cavendish has steadily increased since Sylvia Bowerbank and Mendelson’s groundbreaking Paper Bodies (Broadview 2000), with historians of science and philosophy joining ranks with literary scholars in the serious study of Cavendish’s oeuvre. This panel invites papers that shed new light on Cavendish’s literary and philosophical productions; I am especially interested in those papers that examine the interrelations between Cavendish’s poetics and her natural philosophy, but papers on any Cavendish topic will be given full consideration. Please email a 300- word abstract and 2-page c.v.

Spontaneous Beauties: World Gardens and Gardens in the World

An International Conference from

The Division of English, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore

Venue: School of Humanities and Social Sciences, NTU, Singapore

Dates: 10-12 June 2016

Organising Committee: Shirley Chew, Samara Cahill, Ann-Marie Chua

In “Epistle to Burlington,” Alexander Pope slyly characterizes the flowers in an eighteenth-century garden as arising — naturally and seemingly without human interference — to please the spectator. The poem, however, is Pope’s celebration of good sense, taste, and intelligent (and civically responsible) displays of wealth, and there is nothing “spontaneous” about the beauties of the garden at Stowe—these beauties delight because they combine art and nature in a symbiotic interweaving of natural and human “genius.”

The Division of English, NTU, invites papers on a range of international perspectives on the different aesthetic principles according to which gardens are designed and shaped and made throughout the ages, examples being the classic gardens of China and Japan, the paradisal enclosed gardens of medieval times, Mughal gardens, eighteenth-century landscape gardens, and, last but not least, “Gardens by the Bay” in present-day Singapore. It seeks to explore the significant part that gardens and garden-making play, and have played, in relation to critical questions and practices of ecology and environment. It welcomes contributions on the representation of gardens in disciplines such as literature, art, film, sociology, economics and law; and interdisciplinary projects that attend to, for example, the interweavings of contemporary sustainability discourse and systems thinking, network theories and complexity studies. A special and local focus will be the Botanic Gardens in Singapore which has very recently been made a UNESCO heritage site.

Pittsburgh, PA March 31 – April 3, 2016

#ASECS16 #SASECS

Re-Imagining Enlightenment: Islamic Cosmopolitanism in the Pan-Oceanic World

In its many manifestations during the long century, Islam forms a connecting thread between the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, South China Seas, and even into the Atlantic. This panel is interested in multiple levels of interaction: from comparative studies of Islamic communities in different regions to Islamic interactions with other groups in specific contact zones such as the Deccan and Levant, to the travels of individuals, such as Ayuba Suleiman Diallo’s journey from Senegal to Colonial North America to Britain.

As eighteenth-century scholarship increasingly embraces a wider geographic breadth and makes connections between scholarship on Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean, to what extent does this Pan-Oceanic turn challenge or conform to Atlantic world conceptions of “Enlightenment”?

How do we talk about cross-cultural encounters from the point of view of peoples who did not think of the eighteenth century as the period of “Enlightenment”?

Do models for discussing the Atlantic World 18th century, such as Anderson’s Imagined Communities, apply to the Islamic world(s) at this time?

How did interactions with the Islamic world influence the cultural development of the Americas and Europe?

In what ways did European conceptions of Islamic cultures shape their perceptions of and interactions with regions with Muslim populations, such as South and South East Asia, as well as multiple regions of Africa?

Compassing the Mind in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature

The tropes of curiosity and wonder have become perennial concerns in travel studies and feature prominently in work by scholars across the theoretical spectrum. In recent years, there has also been an increasing focus on the fragility of the European self who narrates his travels (e.g., Jonathan Lamb’s Preserving the Self in the South Seas, 1680-1840), while other studies like Margaret Cohen’s The Novel and the Sea have started to reexamine how travel conventions and personas—and the “poetics of adventure”—filter into the early novel. However, there seems far more to be said about how wonder, curiosity, and ‘surprize’ function internally as a device for or a reflection of the intake of new knowledge. How are acts of wonder, perception, and cognition represented in travel and travel-related texts? How does spatial and epistemological dislocation allow for the type of defamiliarization necessary to ‘see’ and understand the self and/or mind with wonder and/or enhanced precision, and how does the narration of cognitive processes contribute to self-construction? In what ways does travel itself become a trope for representing knowledge accrual and cognition?

We invite papers that discuss any aspect of cognition, perception, and/or tropes of wonder in travel literature, particularly those papers that implement interdisciplinary approaches. To propose a paper, please send by Sept. 15 2015 a 250-word abstract and 2-page c.v. to elltam@nus.edu.sg and ftboyle@fordham.edu.

CFP: The 16th Biennial Symposium onLiterature and Culture in the Asia-Pacific RegionThe Forbidden

What is considered illegal, unethical, subversive, sinful, or politically incorrect? What aren’t we allowed to do, say, or think? Which spaces are closed to us? How have we infiltrated these spaces and crossed these lines? Who are we crossing? Can we assume that “the forbidden” is indeed an objective or stable category, or can we discuss the line between the acceptable/permissible/moral and the transgressive/unethical/deviant as being contingent on other factors?

Because so many standards, codes, traditions, and conventions must be renegotiated, from ancient times to the digital age, such questions are especially difficult to answer. Both online and offline, new boundaries are simultaneously being set, tested, and crossed. Especially in this time of profound change, very little is off limits. At the same time, these once-forbidden sites, practices, and behaviours constitute territory that authorities are struggling to control and monitor even as it fends them off.

While all literatures explore the forbidden, this Symposium seeks to investigate its implications specifically for the literatures, cultures, and perspectives of the Asia-Pacific region seen by scholars on and in the region. It invites research on impropriety in all its forms, from mischief and rule-breaking to crime, sin, and subversion. It also celebrates writing itself as a dangerous or deadly habit, a form of deviant behavior, infiltration, or transgression.
Paper topics include but are not limited to:

Venue and Transportation The symposium will take place in three universities in Manila, each with its own flavour and atmosphere. The three universities are also recognized as centers of excellence for Literature. The first day will be at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City, the second day will be in De La Salle University in the heart of Manila, and the third will be at the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City.

Registration for Paper Readers The registration fee is 100USD/4300PHP. This covers morning snacks, lunch, and afternoon snacks for the duration of the conference and a conference kit. Payment details will follow.

Paper proposals Please send a 200-word abstract of your paper by email to the symposium convenors at lcap16@up.edu.ph on or before June 30, 2015. Abstracts should be in Word format and should be sent as an attachment. A registration form will be sent to those whose abstracts will be accepted. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by July 15, 2015.

Literary Readings Literary reading sessions will be held at the end of each conference day. Please indicate in your registration form whether you are interested in participating in these sessions.Recommended Hotel Microtel Inn, UP-Ayala Technohub (http://www.microtel-uptechnohub.com), offers a special conference rate to participants in the symposium (USD75/night). It is located along Commonwealth Ave, Diliman, Quezon City, near two of the university conference venues. Shuttle buses will be provided between this hotel and conference venues. Microtel is a green hotel, with rooms that overlook a triangular garden. Rooms and facilities are at par with international standards, including chiropractor-approved mattresses, cable TV, and wireless internet access. The hotel also features a restaurant with an al fresco patio, and is right next door to the UP-Ayala Technohub’s complex of restaurants. It is also close to an array of key landmarks in the area, including UP, churches, dining spots, and shopping malls. Book through Alyssa Fagutao affagutao@microtel.ph, subject heading your email: ‘LCAP16 Manila Booking.’

Convenors
Lily Rose Tope, University of the Philippines
Dinah Roma, De La Salle University Manila
Danilo Francisco M. Reyes, Ateneo de Manila University

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A SASECS-sponsored panel at the ISECS Congress, July 26-31, 2015, Rotterdam

“Eighteenth-Century Narrative Traffic.”

Recent scholarship of eighteenth-century British and European fiction has started to investigate how narratives themselves travel across time and space—between east and west, periphery and metropole, Europe and America. For instance, Margaret Cohen’s recent book examines not only how maritime fiction makes up one of the primary gene pools for the early British, French, and American novel, but also how the form itself travelled back and forth across the Atlantic as it developed. Similarly, nearly a decade ago, Ros Ballaster illustrated how early English fiction was shaped by oriental narratives that filtered into England via France.

This panel invites papers that examine any aspect of the “narrative traffic” theme, with special focus on tracking how forms, ideas, and texts travel across time and space. We are especially interested in narrative traffic between Asia and Europe and in the development of the early novel, but we welcome papers that examine texts from any region or decade of the long eighteenth century.

For consideration, please email a 250-word abstract as well as a brief, one-page c.v. (both as Word attachments) to elltam@nus.edu.sg and SACAHILL@ntu.edu.sg. Please submit proposals by January 12, 2015 (extended deadline). Primary texts may be in any language, but abstracts and conference papers should be in English.

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CFP for Upcoming Collection (Jadavpur University):

Our proposed collection aims to explore the meanings of crossover in the eighteenth century. The concept of crossover grew out of the uneasy reconcilement between the era’s belief in the absoluteness of taxonomical categories and its paradoxical insistence on the potential malleability and manipulability of the same. Sweeping changes in the cultural scene challenged the seeming discreteness between conceptual kinds, and unleashed the possibility of transcending boundaries of all sorts. For instance, the spurt of popular interest in humanoid automata (Jaquet-Droz’s The Writer and Kemplen’s The Turk), animalistic humans (the natural man, the freak, or wild children) and anthropomorphic animals (talking parrots, the Ourang-Outang, or horses with human-like intellect such as the Houyhnhnms in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels) was part of larger intellectual debates about the hybridity, blending, and dissolving of physical categories. Interestingly, rather than confining the term to corporeal transformations alone, the eighteenth-century opened out the interpretive possibilities of the idea by applying it to other cultural discourses as well. Transgression of gender norms, blurring of generic types, and traversing of geographical boundaries were quite prolific, and have begun to attract scholarly attention across disciplines in recent years. An examination of the representations of such ‘crossing over’ during 1700 – 1800 thus can offer a new perspective for interrogating and upholding the limits of essentialist classificatory schemas. We seek papers from academics interested in discussing eighteenth-century texts or cultural moments that cross gender, generic and geographical borders. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to the following: